Only horses who have injuries or infections are administered Phenylbutazone. Not only would it not be administered to a horse who is bound for slaughter, it also only stays in the bloodstream for 5 days. It would be very rare for someone to administer this very expensive remedy to a horse that was going to be slaughtered within days, plus the amount of Phen that a human would ingest when eating a horseburger is astronomically small and would have no ill effect.

I know that this article placed horse meat in a bad light, but in actuality it is better for you than beef as horse meat is much leaner than beef or pork. We seem to have a "love" fixation on horses which makes it unseemly to eat one, but horse meat has been consumed for centuries, and eating them is a much greater use of an animal which has been injured or has no more use to the owner than simply killing it and burying it. It is a very healthy food source.

"It came from abattoirs in Romania through a dealer in Cyprus working through another dealer in Holland to a meat plant in the south of France which sold it to a French-owned factory in Luxembourg which made it into frozen meals sold in supermarkets in 16 countries."

Terrydatroll: iron de havilland: BalugaJoe: Horse meat contains Phenylbutazone which is not good for human consumption.

Horse meat may contain phenylbutazone if the horse from which the meat came was treated with phenylbutazone.

Such meat is not considered safe for human consumption within the EU.

LOL.

And I don't get subby's headline. If you're eating equine meat, how is donkey worse than horse?

/Other than the fact that it tastes like ass.

Absolutely nothing is wrong with eating donkey. It is a very lean, healthy source of protein.

Yeah. that was my point. It's no worse than horse.

The only issue I have with the whole affair is that if we're being mis-sold horse as beef, can we trust the standards of the abattoirs in general? An abattoir selling horse as beef is unlikely to worry if the horse has been treated with bute.